Tuesday, July 31, 2007

CALIFORNIAN SYNTHPUNK **MAYHEM**!If the Silver Apples were a punk band. Totally amazing.Although all 13 tracks are tagged as "Nervous Gender" here, technically tracks 8-13 (side B) should be credited to "Beelzebub Youth," even though both "bands" are really the same band.

Monday, July 30, 2007

This double live album is another impressive release from Keiji Haino. For this concert he was joined by Sitaar Tah! (a twenty strong sitar orchestra) and a throat singer by the name of Fuyuki Yamakawa.

It’s as good as it sounds.

Not to be confused with the similarly-sounding EP by the Icelandic string quartet that frequently backs Sigur Ros, this (now out of print at the source, but a few copies are probably floating around the internet shops) sprawling, 97-minute collaboration (one track spread across two CDs) between Japanese guitar god Haino (Fushitsusha) and a 20-piece sitar orchestra (Sitaar Tah!) was recorded live on June 26, 2004 at Uplink Factory in Tokyo. When Haino took the stage, the audience and, judging from the hesitant opening strains, Haino himself had no idea where the evening’s entertainment was going to take them. Like the opening segment to the title track of Ghost’s ‘Hypnotic Underworld,’ the excruciatingly long “feeling out” process takes nearly eight minutes before “something happens,” and that something is not Haino whipping off one of his patented ear-bleeding guitar solos, but an exploratory flute passage that continues our musical equivalent of ‘Waiting For Godot.’ Thirteen minutes deep into these hesitant meanderings, I’m wondering if this isn’t going to be Haino & Co.’s sonic recreation of the old proverb that the joy of the journey is not in the reaching of one’s destination, but in the journey itself.

After sixteen minutes of “nothing happening,” the frustration quotient is at an all-time high, unless the listener is willing to suspend their desire that a musical composition must have an ultimate destination. For after twenty minutes it appears that Haino, to quote Dylan, “ain’t going nowhere” and he’s ultimately gonna take 97 minutes to get there. In other words, the ‘Animamima’ listening experience is tantamount to waiting 97 minutes for the other shoe to drop. So having abandoned our Western, destination-focused musical mindset, we can reapproach the composition and be enveloped by its hallucinatory drone, which sounds like a repetitive series of motorik, bowed sitar notes interspersed with Haino’s occasional flute bursts.

An extremely challenging, yet ultimately rewarding piece of music that can serve as both a spiritual soundtrack to a meditative state or a relaxing backdrop to a casual stroll through the Japanese Fine Arts section of your local museum. Just remember, Grasshopper, that the joy is in the journey or, in the elegant words of the famous Western philosopher Lemmy Kilmister, “the chase is better than the catch.”~Jeff Penczak @terrascope.co.uk

Sunday, July 29, 2007

1. Entering The World Of Morpheus2. Ship Of Dreams3. Harpies Bizarre4. Cyren's Call5. The Tempest6. Dancing With The Devil, parts I & II7. Pennelopes's Lament8. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night9. Work Song10. Daybreak's Reprieve

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s LOUIS TILLETT provided a commanding and distinctive presence on the Australian alternative music scene. He was a softly spoken individual, yet it was his rich baritone singing voice (once described as “burning like a deep wound… like it’s oozing from the cracks of a tomb”), characteristic keyboard technique and exceptional song writing skills that earned him a reputation as an artist of considerable imagination, authority and conviction, and as a sideman of redoubtable stature. In addition to leading groups like the Wet Taxis, Paris Green and the Aspersion Caste, his work as a backing musician with Catfish, Ed Kuepper, the New Christs and Tex Perkins kept him firmly in the public eye. Louis’s first band, the Wet Taxis, commenced life as an experimental outfit in the manner of fellow Sydneysiders Severed Heads and Scattered Order before taking on a tougher 1960s-influenced direction.

Their classic debut single on the Hot label, ‘C’mon’ (1984), boasted an authentic garage/R&B sound heavily influenced by such American garage/punk bands as the Moving Sidewalks, We the People and the Chocolate Watchband plus legendary Australian group the Atlantics (who originally issued the song as ‘Come On’ in 1967). Alongside the likes of Died Pretty, the Celibate Rifles, the Lime Spiders, the New Christs, the Hoodoo Gurus and the Eastern Dark, the Wet Taxis came to epitomise the Australian garage rock sound and aesthetic of the 1980s. The band’s only album was the appropriately named From the Archives (Hot, 1984). The 1960s garage rock sound served the Wet Taxis well, yet Louis was constantly in search of new musical terrain to explore. This led him to the acoustic-based No Dance side project with Died Pretty’s Brett Myers and Celibate Rifles’ Damien Lovelock (one EP, ‘Carnival of Souls’ in 1984) and the improvisational jazz/blues-influenced Paris Green ensemble which covered material ranging from Mose Allison and John Coltrane to Ray Charles.

Following the release of the Wet Taxis single ‘Sailor’s Dream’ on the Citadel label (1987), Louis folded the band and immediately recorded his debut solo album Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell with support from a stellar array of local musicians including guitarist Charlie Owen and drummer Louis Burdett. The album relied upon a brooding intensity for its emotional effect, yet there was always a lighter more positive side as displayed on tracks like ‘Trip to Kalu-Ki-Bar’. His next band the Aspersion Caste included Owen, Burdett, ex-Wet Taxis guitarist Penny Ikinger and a powerful horn section and was heard on A Cast of Aspersions (1990) and its astonishing single ‘Condemned to Live’. A Cast of Aspersions was an eclectic and potent exploration of mood and emotions driven by Louis’s booming baritone voice and smouldering organ, jagged guitar lines and the swinging brass arrangements. Louis kept the Aspersion Caste on the road (including performances in Europe and New York) until 1992 when he recorded his next solo album Letters to a Dream. In 1995, he collaborated with Owen on the album Midnight Rain before they joined Ken Gormly and Jim Elliot (from the Cruel Sea) as backing musicians for Tex Perkins, on tour to promote his 1996 solo album Far be it From Me. Louis released his last album, Cry against the Faith, in 1999. As well as travelling overseas and succumbing to bouts of ill-health due to his well-publicised battle with alcoholism, he continued to put in occasional live performances around Sydney (often with help from Gormly and Elliot). An ABC-TV documentary produced a few years ago on the man, A Night at Sea, provided rare insight into his role as a performer and his struggles with personal demons. He has now emerged in 2005 with renewed vigour. All of which brings us to his new album, The Hanged Man, an exemplary return to form and a solo release in the truest sense. Louis recorded The Hanged Man in Bangkok, Thailand in July 2004 with a local engineer called O, and it focuses squarely on his skills as a song writer, producer, singer and multi-instrumentalist par excellence – a remarkable achievement from a remarkable musician. Written by Ian McFarlane 2005 - Author of Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop. (Allen & Unwin, 1999)

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Scritti's early Rough Trade singles, kicking off with the classic "Skank Bloc Bologna." If someone asked me to choose the paradigmatic post-punk tune, I might just pick this one... Though Green Gartside was nothing if not overly analytical, and a lot of these tunes come across more as if they're assignments for a composition class or genre exercises than passionate political screeds, there's still some great stuff here, and it's certainly interesting to listen to these angular, scraping gems, with their off-key but catchy melodies, in light of Scritti's 1985 masterpiece Cupid + Psyche 85, searching for the points of comparison...Get it HERE

Friday, July 27, 2007

Brian Healy is the mastermind behind the gothic rock band Dead Artist Syndrome. For 15 years and a bunch of albums Dead Artist Syndrome has been playing, recording and touring the underground of America while getting worldwide airplay and a worldwide fan base. Always different, always interesting, DAS has an ever changing line up with Healy as the ringmaster, They continue to seek world domination by way of the dark corners of the gothic music scene.They are curently in the studio and finally planning to play a few gigs in their home base of southern California.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Marc Mijlemans wrote in Humo : "The debut album of T.C.Matic is filled with interesting, intriguing and at times even impressive music. Factory funk, this is. Brutal city noises from a hard world somewhere in between A Certain Ratio and Simple Minds .. Export-ready Flemish Rock, 'cause most of the songs can easily survive the comparison with new things coming from England. ... Never has a group from Belgium showed so much soul as T.C.Matic on this existential cry from the rhythmic jungle. I love T.C.Matic, but I wonder if that means I also have to love the voice of Arno Hintjens. Yes? Well, OK then."

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Non is essentially the one-man project of noisemonger and provocateur Boyd Rice, whose solo work is virtually interchangeable with that released under his Non alias. Rice's first work, originally titled The Black Album, consisted of looped bits of girl-group and bubblegum songs worked into a numbing drone; it was released in 1981 by Mute under the title Boyd Rice. Subsequent Non releases like the antagonistic Physical Evidence (1982) and the textured noise of Blood and Flame (1987) pushed the limits of aural accessibility. A compilation of Non's '80s material, some of it non-LP, was released in 1991 under the title Easy Listening for Iron Youth. In the mid-'90s, Rice has revived Non often; 1992's In the Shadow of the Sword focused on social Darwinism, while 1995's Might! was an opus of musically backed poetry inspired by author Ragnar Redbeard's (likely Jack London) Might Is Right. Non released the album God and Beast in 1997, sporting the clearest production to date on any of their works. Receive the Flame followed in early 2000 and Children of the Black Sun in 2002, the latter accompanied by a DVD 5.1 mix of the album.

Lyrically and musically challenging, "MIGHT!" is a journey through Ragnar Redbeard's controversial "Might Is Right" (which was penned nearly a century ago); a little known masterpiece which is considered by many to be the definitive explosion of Darwinian law as it applies to man, his world and his nature. The album combines the hard noise extremity of earlier NON recordings, with background ambience and a revised attitude to the use of words and sounds. And, as always, NON challenges the listener to question the standard notions of what is decent and proper in a civilised world.

1997 - God & Beast

Tracks :1 God & Beast2 Between Venus & Mars3 Millstones4 The Coming Forth5 The Law6 Lucifer, The Morning Star7 Out Out Out8 Phoenix9 Total War

God and Beast features the best production thus far on any Non release, courtesy of Ken Thomas (David Bowie, Slade, Paul McCartney, etc.). The album finds Boyd Rice delving into his trademark experimental noise, combining new material with remakes of previous tracks "Total War" and "Out Out Out."~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide

Monday, July 16, 2007

Review :After initially coming to American attention with Koksofen, the trio achieved a slightly higher stature with Home, consisting of a re-recording of five earlier tracks in a new series of sessions. Einstürzende Neubauten member and sometime Brotzmann collaborator F. M. Einheit helped produce Home, ensuring the band's combination of abstract artiness and crunching electricity would come through in a big way.

The sound didn't change in particular, but in terms of blunt power the Home recordings can be considered the best, and they certainly don't sound anything like an attempt to hit the mainstream. Tempos are still low and ponderous much of the time, the whole pitch of the album sounds shifted towards the bass, and Brotzmann's own guitar work feels like sludge coming through another layer of same. Far from being a criticism, though, this is a definite recommendation.

"Tempelhof," sharing its name with a Berlin airport, is one of the best monster rock tracks ever, a perfect calling card for the Massaker's abilities. After a slightly softer but still ominous start, Brotzmann kicks in with a charging, simple but deadly guitar line, accompanied in fits and starts by the other two members. Brotzmann's half-quavering half-rampaging vocals add to the unnerving feeling of the piece, which gets a touch lighter halfway through before kicking in again. "Massaker" itself is just as strong, an avant-feedback clang of a number with plenty of noisy sludge reshaped into new and strange ways. If drawing a connection between Brotzmann and his father's work sometimes forces the issue a bit much, "Massaker" is definitely a number that shows where it can lie. The other two long cuts, "Hunter Song" and the rolling "Bohmen," along with the shorter intro piece "The Tribe," fill out this challenging and rewarding album.~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Biography :Formed in Berlin, Germany in 1987, the Caspar Brotzmann Massaker was a vehicle for its nominal leader, an acclaimed guitar virtuoso (as well as the son of saxophonist Peter Brotzmann) whose intense work summoned the spirit and power of traditions ranging from heavy metal to free jazz. A trio also comprised of bassist Eduardo Delgado Lopez and drummer Danny Arnold Lommen, the Massaker debuted in 1987 with The Tribe, a showcase for Brotzmann's dive-bombing guitar work and ominous vocals. With 1992's Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore, the trio broadened their structural and rhythmic horizons over the course of four epic tracks ranging in sound from throbbing metal to blues; the following year's Koksofen continued their advancement, but only 1995's Home earned any significant mainstream attention. The live effortZulutime was released in 1996. Mute Massaker followed four years later.~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide

1972 release on the Danelion label, Nurses Song with Elephants, recorded at the Marquee Studios.Bedford mixes classical ensemble with poems, voices and on one track, the use of twenty seven plastic pipe twirlers.The songs challenge the definition of music.There are five tracks on the album: It's Easier Than It Looks, Nurses Song with Elephants,Some Bright Stars for Queen's College, Trona and Sad and Lonely Faces.Bass guitar on the title song is played by Mike Oldfield and the final track features a poem by Kenneth Patchen that is sung by Kevin Ayers.John Peel is included in the acknowledgments.

To most people, David Bedford is best known for his work with Kevin Ayers and Roy Harper, but Bedford was already a composer with avant-garde credentials before teaming up with them. The title track, for example, is a piece for ten acoustic guitars, with elephants represented by a moistened thumb dragged across the back of the soundbox; the "Nurse's Song" is actually a setting of the Blake poem, with a bass guitar accompaniment by Mike Oldfield (with whom Bedford had worked in the Whole World). Every track here is scored for unusual ensembles, such as "Sad and Lonely Faces," which has six pianos and four woodwinds, behind Ayers intoning a poem, or "Some Bright Stars for Queen's College," with 80 voices and 27 plastic twirlers. In some ways, it's a product of its time, when boundary-pushing in modern classical music was the norm, not the exception. And as such, some of it works, some of it is experimentalism for its own sake. Not the best, or most cohesive, of Bedford's records, it's still pleasant to hear again. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide

Disc 201 The Maximus Poems (3:48)02 The Seven Seizures (4:07)03 Thank You Music (6:09)04 Kathleen I'm Sorry (4:28)05 God Will See You (5:36)06 I'm Your Fan (2:24)07 The Bosom Friend (5:23)08 I Love You (1:48)09 Next Time Try Compassion (3:56)10 Charlotte's Brain (2:57)11 Mudd Hutt Four (4:34)12 The Well Hung Jury (3:03)13 Won't Get Far Without Me (4:42)14 Ball Five (4:58)15 She Won't Let Go (3:53)16 I've Seen the End (3:59)17 Coda (1:33)

ReviewOnly the wit of Bongwater and Shockabilly guitarist and renowned producer Kramer could get away with this -- a three-LP rock opera released as a box set in 1993 on his own Shimmy Disc label.

The collection covers a year's work in his Noise New Jersey studio, where he toyed for long hours with the George Martin aesthetic, an answering machine, and his extraordinary gift for pop songwriting (not to mention guitars). Somehow, he sculpted it all into a cohesive whole with The Guilt Trip. What better way to spend an afternoon immersed in psychedelic pop -- it's as though he set out to make his own dream of a '60s concept album. His hybrid sound borrows from the best of the Kinks, the Hollies, John Lennon, and Led Zeppelin fused with his own unique avant rock approach, which is based on the simple deployment of overdubbing and reverb drenching that creates songs that seem to hover in space. Few other artists could pull it off -- the Residents or Half Japanese perhaps -- yet such an audacious undertaking from a solo artist must be commended. That is not to say that The Guilt Trip isn't just a tad self-indulgent. It is utterly self-indulgent, and for that very reason is overwhelming brilliant. Kramer called on a couple of friends (David Licht for drum duties and Randolph A. Hudson for additional guitar), but produced, played, and recorded everything else himself, in just over a year in his studio downtime from his day job as record producer, an occupation in which Kramer challenged Steve Albini for the mantle of most-overworked producer in indie rock.

The Guilt Trip's first disc is an entirely well-formed suite that swings between pure psychedelic pop, humorous Led Zeppelin-esque instrumentals, and sampling pastiche/tape collage in pure Bongwater fashion. Kramer's extraordinary ability to fuse sincerity and irony is one key to his work -- a songwriter with an uncanny ability to adopt existing forms. From Beatlesque pop gems such as "Wish I Were in Heaven" through to the warped Americana of "I'm Your Fan," Kramer displays a gift for appropriation and cheeky quotation. If you can take the full-immersion listening experience of the album in one sitting, it is highly recommended to do so, as the exercise reveals more and more with each listen.~ Skip Jansen, All Music Guide

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Weird and wonderful percussion-heavy ethnological experimental dub produced by Adrian Sherwood. I'd start with the masterpiece Songs of Praise and work my way backwards, chronologically, as the earlier albums are more austere and, to my ears at least, slightly less accessible.

Bio:For the uninitiated Sh'Mantra play a unique style of experimental rock that taps the mother-lode of dark ambience, cacophonous noise-art, space rock and free form psychedelia.As a point of reference Sh'Mantra have been compared to Radiohead, Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Tangerine Dream and Neu, but even then you get the feeling that these comparisons don't do full justice to the wide scope of sounds that Sh'Mantra are more than capable of producing.

Formed in September 1995 under the name Cornucopia, the band released a 10-track demo 70 minutes long. Such was the popularity of this hard to describe sounding music that the tape is no longer available and is highly sort after. The band then underwent a transformation changing their name to Sh'Mantra and releasing their debut CD Cornucopia on the New Zealand based Cranium Music label.

May 2001 saw the release of the bands second album Formula Orange. a disc of startlingly unique and original music. Formula Orange is a double cd of long instrumental pieces building from minimalist ideas and worked into intricate soundscapes, underpinned by sparse vocal arrangements and the occasional moment where it would be tempting to call it rock if only to end the uneasy feeling that this music invites.

Sub_floating EP released 2002Sh'Mantra plays modern music with a disturbed feel.

From Aural Innovations #6 (April 1999) ~Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz

The latest release from our friends at Cranium is Australian band Sh'mantra's debut CD. The music, though difficult to define, is a great mix of psychedelia, raw jam rock, metal, and progressive rock. The band consists of Matt Seldon on bass, Thorin Kerr on keyboards and vocals, Alex Hole on guitar, Shane Wedesweiller on guitar, and Michael Lenton drums. The very cool cover painting depicts an apocalyptic world with what looks like robots sporting bullhorns on a terrain that seems to be a microchip. Smokestacks billow in the background. I think this is a concept work and a voice during the first track says something about radiation fallout.

The 10 minute opening track, "Recurring Nocturnal Habit" is an overture piece building up very slowly and features some cool, though not flashy, metal sounding guitar. "Shipwreckers", one of my favorite tracks, is an extended jamming piece that gets downright psychedelic jazzy. One guitar and the rhythm section maintain the jazz feel while the other guitar wails away in an all too brief freakout. "Spawn Of Tamagotchi" is a raw, jamming metallic piece that perfectly fits the dark world depicted in the cover painting. Sh'mantra excels at creating adventurous heavy rock that focuses more on telling a story and creating aural landscapes than being flashy, which is what this style of music typically is.

The music is primarily instrumental, though there are some voiceovers and some dissonant vocals on "A'extent Dawn" that sound like Robert Wyatt (though the music certainly doesn't). I really like how this track alternates between light music during the vocal sections and bursts of doomy metal. There's some good guitar work with one guitar providing a psychedelic metallic crunch and the other playing a simple, but disturbing melody line. The rest of the disc follows these themes and I loved the distinct, but cooperative contributions from the twin guitars.

In summary, Sh'mantra plays heavy, but melodic rock that should appeal to spacerockers, and fans of heavy psych and prog.

The album it was to big...so, i had to split it in 2 parts...I add also as bonus the "Sub Floating" [ep] 2002

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Crispy Ambulance's sole studio album. Bleak and droning post-punk (even more so than usual for this genre). While certainly not the greatest band out there, they have their moments. You'll hear some great synth sounds, quite a few driving and repetitive basslines, and some lovely long hypnotic instrumental passages.Get it HERE.